Dating a fender bassman head

The large Fender logo of the export Squier series was soon changed to a large Squier logo.

The first Fender Japan guitars are known as the JV Fenders and JV Squiers, with JV standing for "Japanese Vintage" to reflect the guitars were made from the original blueprints of the vintage US guitars, were made by the Fuji Gen Gakki factory in Japan, using technical support from Fender.

In 1996, Squier began to manufacture the Vista Series, which saw them introducing their own unique guitar designs independent from the Fender mother company for the first time.

Made in the same factory as the Japanese Fenders of the era, they were known as high quality guitars.

The VM line draws from a wide range of Fender instruments, and has resulted in a large variety of models with many different feature combinations. S = Samick, E = Young Chang, E letter serial numbers were used on Young Chang's Fenix brand guitars.

Vintage Modified guitar models include Stratocasters, Telecasters, Jaguars, Jazzmasters and Mustangs. The first number following the serial number prefix is the year.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s Fender was facing competition from lower priced Japanese made guitars.These models were Fender models and not Squier models.The stratocasters had Fender USA pickups installed and were made for the Japanese market only and not for export.The higher priced Fender guitars were made in the United States and could not compete with the lower prices of Japanese made Fender copies.In the early 1980s, Japanese labour and production costs were much lower than in America and to compete with the Japanese made guitars, Fender moved the lower priced Fender guitar production from America to Japan.